Social Media

Facebook Acquires Walletin, Gains Two C-Level Gaming Hires

Facebook has made yet another talent grab; this time, the object of its acquisition was still in stealth mode when the deal closed.

The reason Facebook was so eager to acquire Walletin, the startup in question, is said startup's co-founders. Walletin was started by Cory Ondrejka, who was formerly the CTO of Linden Labs (makers of Second Life), and Bruce Rogers, who was once a coder for Atari before moving on to become CTO of gaming company Cryptic Studios.

So, what will Facebook be doing with two highly experienced, social/video game executives?

While we're not exactly sure what Walletin was all about, we do know that Rogers and Ondrejka will be "running with it" after their move to Facebook.

During development [at Walletin], we got calls from friends at big Silicon Valley companies. We took those meetings because they came with free lunch, great conversations, and Walletin Global HQ doesn’t have air conditioning. We came away smarter for the discussions, but decided it was more fun to keep doing our own thing.

When we met with Facebook, we expected the same result.

Instead we met our people. Engineers focused on getting shit done... The more we learned about Facebook, the more we saw our ideas fitting in. The more we saw an opportunity exciting enough to abandon Walletin Corporate HQ and go into work every day. Ultimately, it was an easy decision and we will both be joining Facebook.

Ondrejka concluded that both he and Rogers are "thrilled by what we’re going to do next. It’s going to be fun."

We certainly can't wait to hear what the two former CTOs will be getting up to at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto. What do you think — is Facebook going to step into the social gaming space in its own right with these two gaming titans onboard?

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